of course both. im trying to set up my mac book g4 with programs right now and let me tell you its a complete BITCH switching from a setup i know like my own pocket (flp on my pc with all my hardware) to not only this new daw (ableton) but a completely new operating system (mac) which also happens to be completely outdated !!! (g4 10.4.11)
but im going to do this though, trust me, it shall be done. cos i have this romantic notion of sitting at work during lunch hours writing songs

in the past ive had a microkorg, two electribes and a DSI Evolver.
I wish i still had the evolver cause it was brutal and perfect for dnb but i was a noob then and sold it so i could buy a sp404, i dont really regret it though.

Eventually id like to have the setup of a Virus TI polar and a machine drum with the built in sampler. one day

I used to own mad amounts of hardware, from novation supernova 2 XL, access virus indigo, Korg Ex5, roland VP9000, 2 x quasimidi sirius, Korg electribes (drum, synth and sampler (the early ones, blue red and green), an original and working roland Juno 106 (had to let the fucker warm up though, as all the notes would sound bung for 10 mins...moreso towards the higher octaves) a Roalnd JV 2080, Roland jp-8000, and Alesis andromeda.....my pride and joy was my Devilfish Modded TB303, with midi and various cv jacks....and thats not all of it.

I prefer software because of total recall. having to set up each and every synth for each track, was a pain in the arse. same with dropped notes...I fucken hated dropped notes...you could spend fucken HOURS just trying to work out which piece of hardware was causing it to run out of midi channels. then theres the damned cables..EVERYWHERE!!

I've sold most of my hardware now. I kept a couple of bits and pieces, and multisampled a few of them....
seriously though, while hardware in a studio LOOKs awesome, in reality its a pain in the arse. And nowhere near as fun/painless to work with.

Also, hardware still crashes....you'd get some piece crash, and cause all the other pieces to hold a note on, or some other equally bizzarre effect. In my studio, the main culprit for this was the Roland Variphrase 9000....although it was a brilliant piece of kit...it was only so, whilst it was working correctly....was very prone to crashes.

For those of you not in the know...variphrase was kinda of like Celemony Melodyne these days, and it did sound quite excellent.

anyway..enough rambling....software ftw....hardware not so much ftw..imho anyway

Hardwares nice, but the trouble is that theres far to many people who spend silly amounts on hardware synths/samplers etc, only to connect it all up with shit cables and record it through useless converters.

It all depends on what you want to do, some jobs hardware will be more suited to, other jobs software could have the edge. The rate softwares improving at is manic aswel, constantly getting better.